How MAGA Republicans could 'disenfranchise' millions of voters in 2026

06 May

President Donald Trump at the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland on February 22, 2025 (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)

When President Donald Trump was sworn into office on January 20, 2017, Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. But the 2018 midterms saw a major blue wave in the U.S. House of Representatives, and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-California) became House speaker again in January 2019.

Trump is now serving his nonconsecutive second term, and Republicans have small majorities in both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House. Because of Trump's plummeting poll numbers, however, Democrats are hoping that the 2026 midterms will, like 2018, bring a blue wave.

But Ross Rosenfeld, in an article published by The New Republic on May 6, describes a MAGA voter suppression scheme that could enable Republicans to maintain control of Congress in 2026 despite Trump's unpopularity.

"On March 25," Rosenfeld explains, "the president signed Executive Order #14248, 'Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections,' which neither preserves nor protects our elections but rather, undermines them. It is a clarion call to Republicans throughout the nation, who are being encouraged to question the legitimacy of any election loss and ultimately establish a permanent electoral advantage by challenging and removing eligible voters from the rolls. Now, with Trump's executive order, they have insurance: a way of tipping elections in their favor by choosing the voters rather than having the voters choose them."

Rosenfeld continues, "The order instructs the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, or EAC, to amend its national mail voter registration form to require that all voters present documentation proving they are citizens, in the form of an ID that conforms with the REAL ID Act of 2005, a military ID, government-issued photo ID all of which must indicate citizenship status or be accompanied by proof of citizenship — or a passport. A study from the University of Maryland found that this measure alone could disenfranchise approximately one in 10 voters — over 21 million Americans — who do not possess such documents and may have difficulty obtaining them."

According to Rosenfeld, Executive Order #14248 amounts to a "poll tax of sorts" and "would add a cost to voting for those who would have to acquire new IDs."

Doug Spencer, a law professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, told The New Republican that EO 14248 is "going to lead to many people who have a fundamental right not being able to exercise it — adding, "In my opinion, that's a problem for a country that wants to call itself a democracy."

Rosenfeld warns, "But even if it does disenfranchise some Republican voters, the executive order goes further than simply making voting more onerous, providing several ways for Republicans to both win elections and challenge elections they have lost. It directs the U.S. attorney general to sue states that count mailed ballots that are postmarked before Election Day but arrive afterward, effectively killing vote-by-mail. It also mandates that state election officials share voter databases with the secretary of homeland security, and the administrator of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, the cost-cutting commission run by billionaire Elon Musk, all of whom could challenge lists, potentially purging voters."

Read Ross Rosenfeld's full article for The New Republic at this link.

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